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Friday, June 24, 2016

I'm The Professor!

I'm the Professor: Creating Doctor Who Analogues in Spelljammer

Ever have an idea you just can't shake? Since writing a review for Spelljammer yesterday, I keep coming back to how I could create a Doctor Who analogue in a Spelljammer campaign. Keep in mind, I haven't had an active gaming group in fifteen years and haven't played an RPG at all in ten years. Still, Doctor Who + Spelljammer has been nagging at me. Hopefully, writing my ideas down will help me focus on more productive things. I'll be sticking to the AD&D 2e rules for this.

The Professor: In the classic (or infamous) comedy module Castle Greyhawk, there was a halfling Doctor Who analogue called Professor Why. Since a halfling can't run a Spelljamming helm unless he's a priest, I'm going with a gnome thief-illusionist for The Professor. As for his version of the TARDIS, it would be easy enough to make it a contraption with a helm inside and a lot of magical devices for creating extra-dimensional spaces, making it, in fact, bigger on the inside. Woe to anyone entering the Phlogiston in this sort of TARDIS, though.

a renegade Arcane on the run: One of the gems of the Spelljammer setting is the mysterious nature of the Arcane. An Arcane rebelling against his race's cold, mercantile nature could make an interesting NPC, especially if he stole a new product the Arcane hadn't gotten around to marketing yet, or one they deemed too dangerous to use. Perhaps a ship that has a revolutionary type of helm in it and is bigger on the inside?

A rediscovered Juna artifact, flown by the elf that found it: The Juna are responsible (or possibly responsible) for a lot of unexplained things in the Spelljammer universe. How hard is it to think they had Spelljamming technology far in advance of what is currently being used?

Miscellaneous other ideas: Another apparatus created by Kwalish? Someone slapping a Spelljamming Helm in the Dancing Hut of Baba Yaga? There are a lot of possibilities.

Thanks for reading. Hopefully, I can get back to more important things to ponder, like why males have nipples and things of that nature.